The real time estimation of the relative movement of subassemblies constituting a rocket during the jettisoning thereof makes it possible to check the satisfactory performance of operations. The knowledge of the disconnection margins and kinematic disturbances imparted to the jettisoned object conditions the mission, the performances and qualification of the launching systems. Therefore it is a question of determining the trajectory and attitude of the jettisoned object by means of on-board equipment.
In robotics, it is wished to check the displacement of a moving object in a complex environment in order to permit possible trajectory corrections.
The existing means such as observation by cine camera, direct measurements by wire, or observation by video camera in each case suffer from a certain number of disadvantages, such as inaccuracies and poor reliability of the measurements, large overall dimensions, need to recover the cine camera after jettisoning and the difficulty of processing the informations obtained.